Discovered in 1877 by the American astronomer Asaf Hall, a mysterious duet of the Martian moons, called Phobos and Deimos both bewitched and embarrassed the planetary scientists, trying to understand their many secrets. The Martian moons are small and distorted small objects that are often considered to be captured asteroids that were captured long ago by the gravity of the Red Planet - after both of them escaped from Main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Phobos is both the larger of the two moons, and closest to its parent planet of rusty color, and it rotates only 3,700 miles from the surface of Mars, closer to its parent body than any other known moon in our solar system. Indeed, Phobos so close that it revolves around the planet much faster than Mars rotates, ending in orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes. In October 2017, astronomers announced that NASA’s longest-lasting mission to the Red Planet received a first look at Phobos, in his quest to gain a deeper understanding by exploring it in infrared wavelengths.
Thermal Radiation Processing System (THEMIS) camera on board NASA Mars orbit observed a small potato moon on September 29, 2017. Planetary scientists have now combined data with visible wavelength and infrared data to create a color-coded image for the surface temperature on this intriguing tiny moon. Phobos was considered for the potential future outpost of a man’s mission.
"Part of the observed face Phobos was in the predawn darkness part in morning daylight mentioned THEMIS Deputy Chief Investigator Dr. Victoria Hamilton at NASA on October 4, 2017 Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Press Release Dr. Hamilton Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.
Learning from left to right is a sequence of times of the day on a mysterious Martian moon, from dawn to dawn, to an increase in the amount of time following the Martian dawn. This gives valuable information about how quickly the earth on the Red Planet is warming, which is due to the rusty texture of its surface. Sand war or cool much faster than rocks or sidewalks.
“The inclusion of a preliminary observation zone in observation is useful because all the sun's rays that were in the sun reached their minimum, probably not very stony, but dusty, Hamilton continued to explain in Press release JPL.
Ring around Red Planet
Phobos it is an irregular moon with an average radius of only 7 miles, and it is seven times more massive than its native moon, Deimos. Phobos named after the Greek god Phobos, the son of Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (Venus). Mythological Phobos also serves as the personification of horror - therefore, the word phobias.
Because Phobos The orbits of Mars are much faster than Mars is spinning, some strange things are happening in the Martian sky. From the surface of the Red Planet, Phobos sees to go west, move across the sky at 4 o'clock and 15 minutes or less, and set in the east two every martian day.
As one of the least reflective bodies in our solar system, Phobos has an albedo of just 0.071. Surface temperatures range from about 25 degrees Fahrenheit on the sunny side to -170 degrees Fahrenheit on the side that is shaded. The most remarkable surface on this tiny moon is a large impact crater called Stickney that scars are a very fundamental area Phobos & # 39; s surface.
Images and models, instead of being solid, show that Phobos can really be a bunch of debris, held together only by a thin crust. In addition, the small moon is torn apart by tidal interactions. Phobos it approaches its parent planet about 2 meters every hundred years, and it was predicted that for about 30 to 50 million years it would either collide with Mars or be fragmented into countless objects, forming a ring around its planet.
Asaph Hall opened Phobos August 18, 1877 at United States Marine Observatory in Washington DC. Hull has already opened Deimos a few days ago, August 12, 1877.
Phobos possesses too low a mass for rounding under the action of its own gravitational attraction, and also has no atmosphere as a result of its very low mass and low gravity. Spectroscopically it looks like D-type asteroids and it has a composition similar to that of carbon chondrites. Phobos & # 39; s the density is too small to be made of solid rock, and, as you know, it is very porous. These are the results that led to the suggestion that Phobos may contain a significant reservoir of ice. Spectral observations show that the surface layer of the regolith is devoid of water. However, the ice hiding under the regolith is not excluded.
This surface of this tiny Martian moon is also greatly affected by craters. Its most famous crater, Stickney , named after Hall's wife, Angelina Stickney Hall. Stickney is a large impact crater with a diameter of about 5.6 miles, and it occupies a significant portion of the surface area of a small moon. Blow that was excavated Stickney must be very close to explosives Phobos Besides.
Odd surface Phobos covered with numerous grooves and stripes. Grooves typically have a depth of less than 98 feet and a width of 330 to 660 feet, and they can extend up to 12 miles in length. These strange, cutting grooves and stripes were initially thought to be the result of the same impact as the excavation Stickney. However, a thorough analysis based on the results obtained Mars express the spacecraft showed that the grooves are not radial Stickney but instead focused on the main top Phobos in its orbit around Mars (which is not very far from Stickney ). Astronomers now suspect that they were cut because the material was thrown into space by strikes on the surface of the Red Planet itself. As a result, the grooves formed in the form of crater chains, and they all disappear like a back vertex Phobos . Astronomers have grouped them into a dozen or more families of different ages, previously excavated at least 12 blows on the surface of Mars.
Very faint dust rings created Phobos and Deimos were predicted over the years. However, the efforts to monitor these fault rings have so far been empty-handed. Images taken from Mars Global Surveyor Let's pretend that Phobos covered with a blanket of fine-grained regolith with a thickness of at least 100 meters. Some astronomers have suggested that the regolith was obtained by the blows of other bodies, but it is not known how the material sticks to an object like Phobos which has almost no gravity.
Kaidun meteorite who crashed on a Soviet military base in Yemen, back in 1980, suggested that it was a piece Phobos. However, this scenario was difficult to achieve. This is due to the fact that little is known about the exact composition Phobos.
Mars did not always look like today. The planet experienced an intense catastrophic trend billions of years ago. Before this large tilt occurred, the Martian poles were not where astronomers now see.
Recently obtained data describing the Red Planet were obtained from seven active probes that either roam the surface of Mars or rotate around the planet. The seven spacecraft include five orbitals and two rovers. This successful collection includes 2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars exploration orbiter, MAVEN, Opportunities , and Curiosity.
Many unmanned crews, including rovers, orbiters and landing stations, were sent to the Red Planet by the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe and India to study climate, geology and the surface of Mars. Since 2000, cameras spinning around Mars have sent a treasure chest of images to Earth. These images showed that the surface of Mars was etched by small valleys and carved on the slopes. These features are intrusively similar in shape to the ravines carved by the flow of water on Earth. Martian ravines, believed to be less than a few million years old, are a blink of an eye on geological time scales. Indeed, some of the ravines may even be younger!
The doomed Martian Moon has a story to tell.
Cameras in Mars orbits have previously taken higher resolution images. Phobos However, none of the earlier images were obtained using infrared information available from THEMIS. Observations in several bands of thermal infrared wavelengths can provide information about the mineral composition of the surface of a small moon, as well as its surface texture.
One intriguing question about Phobos as well as his smaller sibling moon, Deimos , whether they are really captured asteroids or alternately, pieces of Mars exploded in the sky with blows. Compositional information from THEMIS can finally help astronomers determine their origins.
because the Odyssey started working in Mars orbit back in 2001, THEMIS provided scientists with information on the compositional and thermal properties that exist in the entire Red Planet, but never before from any of the Martian moons duets. The observations made on September 29, 2017, were completed to demonstrate that the spacecraft could safely do this, since the beginning of a possible series of observations Phobos and Deimos in the coming months.
In normal operation, Odyssey saves THEMIS the camera is pointing down when the spacecraft is circling the Red Planet. In 2014, a team of spacecraft on Lockheed Martin Space Systems , in Denver, Colorado, along with NASA JPL and THEMIS A team at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, has developed procedures to rotate a spacecraft to ascend the visualization of a comet flying close to Mars. The teams adapted these procedures to visualize a duo of potato martian moons.
"Now we have the ability to rotate the spacecraft to THEMIS observations. Jeffrey Prayut in October 4, 2017 Press release JPL. Dr. Prayut is Odyssey Project Scientist at Laboratory of jet propulsion.
With the completion of the first observation, additional important observational capabilities are currently planned for different periods of coverage. Phobos and Deimos.
As Dr. Hamilton points out, “we want to get observations under all types of lighting — a full day, small crescent, during an eclipse.
